A Cordial Invitation
by nonphenomenaut
Summary: Young med student John Watson meets the teenage urchin Sherlock Holmes just as he's on the cotyledon case of his detective career. But will this adventure end their friendship before it even starts? Rated M for language and sex. Comes to you layered with references from everything and just as tongue-in-cheek as the show. Bitte.


John Watson sat on the corner of his neatly tucked bed, cooped over a large anatomy text book in his lap, trying to memorize the major anterior muscles of the human larynx. The hyoid bone, the superior and inferior belly of the omohyoid, the millimeter difference of the sternothyroid versus the sternohyoid. He probed his own throat as he tried his hands at mnemonics. 'Lawrence of Arabia' played on silently before him, his sixth time watching it this month. The sweeping scenes of ad nauseum sand kept him grounded. He'd abandoned his previous attempt at mapping out the flags of banded muscles in his hand. His palm was smeared in thick black streaks of permanent marker. 'Hypothener' laid to waste up his wrist. He was a first-year medical student studying at St. Bart's, with an inkling to maybe join the army after he got his degree. 'Be the best' and he was certainly going to try.

He was shorter than he would have liked, with whipcrack manners and hair that was already turning gray above his ears. He was only twenty-one. He was told by girls that it made him look distinguished and mature, so he didn't bother to cover it up. He had a face like a knee hammer and eyes that his mother had convinced him were 'positively swimming with old soul.' She had sent him a care package in the middle of his first semester, five jars of different jam preserves and a picture of his sister Harriet clinking beers with her new girlfriend, Clara.

He was amassing an impressive collection of cable-knit sweaters in his closet and had his shoes all lined up in a row. His roommate, Mike Stamford, liked to tease him that he dressed like a grandfather.

John liked Stamford very much, he was amiable and sweet and gentle and fat. The human equivalent of a figgy pudding. They stayed up talking at night about stupid, typical, monumentous things. Past girlfriends, football championship history, reciting King Arthur's kingly speech to the Britons he'd come upon in the mud in his quest for the Grail, all of it verbatim through fits of rolling laughter. They argued about the plausability of an anarcho-syndicalist commune actually being upheld as a system of government to a city the size of London. John kept it to himself that if shit ever hit the fan, Stamford would be the first to pass the conch, and go down hard like Piggy.

"It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun." Mr. Dryden admonished with his great big belly. John glanced up just as Peter O'Toole blew out the match and the screen succumbed to desert.

"Oi! Where is that fat fucking twat?!" Sebastian Wilkes kicked in the door and had a boy from down the hall in a head lock. John purposefully took a long time to look over at them. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a jaw disproportionately larger than his skull. Like a typical trust-fund baby, he slicked back his hair with product and it made him look like he'd be at his leisure wallowing behind a large oak desk with his wingtips kicked up, grabbing his secretary's ass. John disliked people who were all mouth and no brain.

"He's not here. He's in the lab until six."

"Well tell him, when he waddles his walrus ass back up here, that I came looking for him. And he's coming to the party tonight or he's a fucking fairy. I've got 200 pounds on the line that says I can get him laid by midnight. And mister..." he pressed a sharp knuckle into the sagittal suture of the boy tucked beneath him and beamed proudly when he yelped, "...Van Coon here's got a munter sister that'll do the job. Eh? She's a manky bint ain't she? Ain't she!"

"I'll let him know you stopped by." John said coolly.

Wilkes made a pistol shape with his assaulting hand and fired off a round. "I like you Watson. You're a heartless bastard. Keep up the good work!" And he jostled away down the hall.

John flashed him the bird and collapsed back on his bed, hands starfished out on his yellow plaid buttonup, a slice of his white belly showing. Veni, vidi, vici and more Latin he didn't want to think about. He pulled the golden statue down from its perch and trapped its paw in his fingers. He let go and the lucky cat waved. Maybe he'd text the cute brunette from biochemistry, Sarah Sawyer - who'd gone out of her way to slip him her number, and see what she was up to tonight.

He needed to get out of the dorms and away from gross anatomy for a while. Maybe he could get a little drunk with her and they could snog.

Maybe she'd like to go with him to see a circus.


End file.
